Complexification of Integration

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Part 7 of Development
through Alternation. Augmented version of a paper
originally prepared for Integrative Working Group B of the Goals, Processes
and Indicators of Development (GPID) project of the Human and Social Development
Programme of the United Nations University (UNU). This document was originally
distributed as a separate monograph in 1983. The paper provides a structure
linking reviews of alternation as it emerges in studies from a wide range of
sources. The paper is in 9 separate parts
[searchable PDF version]

7.1 General systems and holonomy

The most deliberate effort to clarify the nature and possibilities of integration
has been made through general systems research (84, 85). This has of necessity
involved the perspectives of many disciplines. Efforts, such as those of
J G Miller (86), have brought a very extensive range of phenomena within the
same framework. General systems has not however been very successful in
bringing its insights to bear upon the world problematique, despite deliberate
efforts to do so (87, 88). Part of the problem seems to lie in the esentially
left-hemisphere approach to describing, explaining, and classifying systems.
This has not met the needs of those participating in systems, however valuable
it has been to those observing such systems.

It is therefore interesting to note the recent effort by J S Stamps to "marry"
the insights of general systems research with those of humanistic psychology,
as an "integration of conscious systems with concrete systems",
in which mind and system are perceived as complementary (89). Stamps interrelates
general systems taxonomies of recent decades to provide a "multi-dimensional
elaboration of the fundamental principles of complementary process and level
structure" which indicates the "limits of integration and transformation"
at each level. The final design of Stamps heuristic taxonomy arises from
the combination of two ideas which he believes have not previously been related:

"Namely, that the complementarity between awareness and organization
can be applied to the distinction between abstracted and concrete systems
and theories. A taxonomy with this feature becomes a potential "Rosetta
stone" for translating abstracted scientific language into conrete scientific
language...(And secondly) is the suggestion that the form and processes of
both individuality and collectivity evolve. To the conventional notion that
phylogeny evolves and ontogeny develops, I have added the idea that phylogeny
also develops and ontogeny also evolves. The importance of being able to
make an argument such as this is enormous, for it places the human individual
into a context of onthological equality with the many layers and types of
human and social organization." (89, p.204)

Stamps makes a deliberate attempt to move beyond Cartesian dualism, especially
in the light of research on the bicameral mind. The limitation of this approach,
as discussed elsewhere (26) lies in his implication that a heuristic taxonomy
does not contain inherent limitations in a society which is increasingly resistant
to such hierarchical orderings, whether conceptual or otherwise. Some of
these limitations emerge in the work of Rescher, discussed in the next section,
where such orderings are contrasted with a "network" organization
of knowledge. Ironically, Stamps subsequently co-authored a book on "networking"
for practitioners, which emphasizes this other perspective (1).

Stamps uses Arthur Koestler's term "holon" as referring
to complex entities,
particularly organisms and people, which are simultaneously whole individuals
and
participating parts of more encompassing wholes (90). From it he names his
approach "holonomy" as being a systems theory which acknowledges the
place of the
human individual. This new term has
also been recently used by Bohm in a rather
different sense, as noted below.

7.2 Cognitive systematization

In order to clarify the implications of the previous sections for some
integrated
approach to human and social development, it is appropriate to consider the
current
status of cognitive systemization.
This has been the concern of Nicholas Rescher
who explores the reason for systematization in the cognitive domain and shows
how
this is one of the crucial features of the development of knowledge (91). It is to be
expected that the pattern of insights and conclusions would be relevant to
development in general.

Rescher identifies eleven definitive characteristics of
systematicity: wholeness,
completeness, self-sufficiency, cohesiveness, consonance, architectonic
structure,
functional unity, functional regularity, functional simplicity, mutual
supportinveness,
and functional efficacy (91, p.10)).
He points out, citing C S Peirce, that the need
for understanding through a unified view of things is as real as any of man's
physical
cravings, and more powerful than many of them. The above characteristics "are
constitutive components of that systemacity through which alone understanding
can
be achieved". (91, p.29) The point of cognitive systematization in
reational terms
is that (a) it is the prime vehicle for understanding by making claims
intelligible,
(b) it authenticates the adequacy of the organization of knowledge, (c) it is a vehicle
of cognitive quality control, providing a test of acceptability, and (d) it
provides the
definitive constituting criterion of knowledge (91, p.29-38). Similar points could be
usefully made about the integration of development.

The alternative modes of cognitive systematization are distinguished by
Rescher.
These are foundationalism, based on a "Euclidean model of a linear,
deductive
exfoliation from basic axiones "and coherentism, a network model of cyclic
systematization of interrelated theses (91, p.39). The Euclidean model is typical of
the logic governing formalized (intergovernmental) development programmes based
on a set of principles. The network
model is typical of the logic of "grass-roots
development movements. From the
network perspective, the Euclidean model
imposes a drastic limitation by "inflating what is at most a local feature of
derivation from the underived (i.e. locally underived) into a global feature that
endows the whole system with an axiomatic structure". Thus although "a network
system gives up Euclideanism at the global
level of its over-all structure, it may still
exhibit a locally Euclidean aspect,
having local neighbourhoods whose systematic
structure is deductive/axiomatic"
(91, p.44-45)

The network model shifts the perspective, as Maruyama also notes, from
unidirectional dependency to reciprocal interconnection, abandoning the concept
of
priority or fundamentality in its arrangement of these. "It replaces such
fundamentally by a conception of enmeshment
in a unifying web" (91, p.46-47),
whereas the Euclidean approach gives priority to derivation from what is better
understood or more fundamental.

Rescher notes (91, p.58-59) basic weakness
in the latter approach was however
demonstrated by Kurt Goedel (92), who showed both that the consistency of any
formal axionatic system can never be proved, and that the deductive
axiomatization
of any such system was inherently incomplete.
There are therefore always "true"
statements in a given domain that cannot be derived from the chosen
axioms. It
would seem that this too has important implications for the limitations of
development programmes elaborated on the basis of pre-determined sets of
principles in some "declaration" or "world plan of action",
especially since Rescher
indicates the possibility of a breakdown of deductivism in the factual sciences as
well (91, p.176).

Rescher also provides a valuable analysis of the limits to cognitive
systematization.
He identifies three possibilities: incompletability, inconsequence (or
disconnectedness, compartrnentalization), and inconsistency (or
incoherence). With
regard to the first, he notes that it is unrealistic to expect either
attainment of a
completed and final state of factual knowledge, or a condition in which all
questions
are answered. "Accordingly, we
have little alternative but to take the humbling
view that the incompleteness of our information entails its incorrectness, as
well"
(91, p.152-3). In a more highly
developed future, fundamental errors will be
perceived in present formulations and programmes - as we can already
detect in
the development strategies of past decades.

With regard to disconnectedness, the second possibility, Rescher argues
that this
cannot characterize the body of our factual knowledge as a whole which can
always
be joined by mediating connections of common relevancy (91, p.164). The
problem
is rather that despite such causal linkage, there could well fail to be
connections in
meaning between two domains. The
fundamental causal matrix in which all natural
occurrences are bound together "might merely be a purely formal unity,
lacking any
sufficient substantive basis of functional connectedness." Nature might come to be
shown as operating in an essentially compartmentalized manner. Furthermore,
Rescher notes, gaps in the knowledge attainable at any time might in practice
block
realization of any underlying interconnectedness. This issue of
compartrnentalization is of course of crucial importance in the design of
interdisciplinary development programmes, for which no adequate methodology has
yet emerged, partly because of separative behaviour characteristic of
disciplines.

With regard to the third possibility, Rescher sees inconsistency as
lying at the root
of the urge to systematicity. It is the
very drive toward completeness that enjoins
the toleration of inconsistency upon us.
But rather than implying no system at all,
any inconsistency-embracing world picture involves the toleration of ungainly
systems of deficient systemacity (91, p.176-7). It is a question of degree.

7.3 Wholeness and the implicate order

As a theoretical physicist, David Bohm is concerned with the illusory
nature of
fragmentation (93 ??, 94) and the manner in
which distinct fragments emerge from
wholeness in movement (8). He sees the
perceptual problems with which he deals as
being as relevant to a more healthy response to psychosocial fragmentation as
to the
problems of fundamental physics. The
value of Bohm's perspective for understanding
healthy individual development has in fact been recently stressed by a
physician
Larry Dossey (95).

For Bohm:

"the widespread pervasive distinctions between people (race, nation,
family, profession, etc.), which are now preventing mankind from working together
for the common good, and indeed, even for survival, have one of the key factors
of their origin in a kind of thought that treats things as inherently
divided, disconnected, and 'broken up' into yet smaller constituent parts...considered
to be essentially independent and self-existent". (8, p. XI)

Attempting to live according to the notion that the fragments are really
separate is then what leads to the growing series of extremely urgent crises
with which society is confronted. "Individually there has developed
a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems
to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control
and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it."
(8, p.2) And yet the seeming practicality and convenience of the process
of divisive thinking about things supplies man with "an apparent proof
of the correctness of his fragmentary self-world view."

Basing his investigations on insights from the current state of physics,
Bohm focuses "on the subtle but crucial role of our general formes of
thinking in sustaining fragmentation and in defeating our deepest urges toward
wholeness or integrity." (8, p.3) He arrives at the conclusion that
"our general world view is itself an overall movement of thought, which
has to be viable in the sense that the totality of activities that flow out
of it are generally in harmony, both in themselves and with regard to the
whole existence." (8, p.XII) This view implies that "flow is,
in some sense, prior to that of the 'things' that can be seen to form and
dissolve in this flow". (8, p.11) Thus the "various patterns
that can be abstracted from it have a certain relative autonomy and stability,
which is indeed provided for by the universal law of the flowing movement".
(8, p.11)

Of special relevance to the question of human and social development, is
that the above-mentioned desirable harmony "is seen to be possible only
if the world view itself takes part in an unending process of development,
evolution, and unfoldment, which fits as part of the universal process that
is the ground of all existence." (8, p.XII) This has the merit of
grounding the concept of development in movement from which appropriate conceptual
and social forms temporarily arise, rather than, as is presently done, starting
from some 'thing' (e.g. a society, a community, or a person) which has to
be stimulated into a process of movement and change that is then called "development"
(under certain conditions).

Bohm cautions against the expectations of quick remedies:

"To ask how to end fragmentation and to expect an answer in a few
minutes makes even less sense than to ask how to develop a theory as new as
Einstein's was when he was working on it, and to expect to be told what do
to in terms of some programme, expressed in terms of formulae or recipes....What
is needed, however, is somehow to grasp the overall formative cause
of fragmentation, in which content and actual process are seen together, in
their wholeness." (8, p.18)

As he notes, this confronts us with a very difficult challenge: "How are we to think
coherently of a single, unbroken, flowing actuality of existence as a whole,
containing both thought (consciousness) and external reality as we experience
it?"
(8, p.X) The approach he suggests
requires looking at the challenge in a new way.
Instead of aiming for some reflective correspondence between
"thought" and "reality
as a whole", the process of thinking about reality as a whole can more
usefully be
thought of as a kind of "dance of the mind" (determing, and being determined) which
functions indicatively. (8, p.55-6)

He uses the indicative role of the well-known bee-dance as an analogy
(although the
element of "alternation" in any such dance should not be
overlooked). As with
Attali, Bohm emphasizes that "thought with totality as its content has to
be
considered as an art form, like poetry, whose function is primarily to give
rise to
new perception, and to action that is implicit in this perception, rather than
to
communicate reflective knowledge of 'how everything is'" (8, p.63). There can no
more be an ultimate form of such thought (or of any principles or programmes to
which it gives rise) than there can be an ultimate poem which would obviate the
need
for further poetic development.

Bohm explores the implications of quantum theory as an indication of
"new order".
The questions he raises are also relevant to the emergence of any new
psychosocial
order. He demonstrates that in the
past recognition of new patterns of order has
involved attention to "similar differences and different
similarities" (8, p. 115),
namely the "irrelevance of old differences, and the relevance of new
differences"
(8, p. 141). The radical
transformation of understanding brought about by quantum
theory, for example, results from recognition of the way in which modes of
observation and of theoretical understanding are related to each other. A social
science equivalent of this is given in Johan Galtung's demonstration of the
impossibility of value-free research (96), although his purpose is to orient
research in
terms of development-oriented values.

For Bohm, however, comprehending the new order bears some resemblance to
artistic perception. He uses Piaget's
distinction between assimilation
(understanding, render comprehensible) and accommodation (adaptation, fitting
to a
pattern) as the basic modes of intelligent perception. This artistic perception then
begins by "observing the whole fact in its full individuality, and then by
degree
articulates the order that is proper to the assimilation of this fact."
(8, p.141) Thus
it does not begin with abstract preconceptions as to what the order has to be,
which
are then "adapted" to the order that is observed.

Bohm uses the differences between a lens system (in measurement
processes) and a
holographic system to show how by use of the former "scientists were
encouraged to
extrapolate their ideas and to think that such an (analytical) approach would
be
relevant and valid no matter how far they went, in all possible conditions,
contexts,
and degrees of approximation." (8,
p.144) The advances in relativity and
quantum
theory imply, however, an undivided wholeness in which such "analysis into
distinct
and well-defined parts is no longer relevant." This is best illustrated by the
hologram in which a whole pattern is somehow encoded into each part, no matter
how small. The new order appropriate to
our time could then be conceived as
contained as a totality, encoded in some implicit
sense into each region of space and
time (8, p.149).

He elaborates an entirely new way of understanding order as "implicate",
or enfolded, which he contrasts with "explicate" forms that are
commonly observed and sought. The simplest example he gives is of a television
image, carried by a radio wave in an implicate order, and then explicated
by a receiver.

In more general terms, Bohm argues that the underlying wholeness in movement
(the "holomovement"), discussed earlier, acts like the radio wave
"carry" an implicate order. Under certain circumstances particular
things (objects, phenomena, people, nations) can then be unfolded from this
dynamic totality by a perceiver, but the holomovement is not limited in any
specifiable way at all. As such it does not conform to any particular order
and is essentially undefinable and immeasurable. This means that no single
theory can capture or contain phenomena on a permanent basis. Rather, each
theory will abstract a certain aspect that is relevant only in some limited
context, lifting it temporarily into attention so that it stands out in relief
(8, p.151). Furthermore, any new order within which a multiplicity of such
aspects are "integrated" is itself not a final goal (as in efforts
at "unified science"), but rather part of a movement from
which new wholes are continually emerging (8, p.157).

This approach is very helpful in opening up ways of conceiving development
and new forms of social order. In providing a mathematical description of
implicate order, for example, Bohm makes a useful distinction between:

transformation, as a geometric rearrangement within a given expliate
order, and

metamorphoses, as a much more radical change (such as between a caterpillar
and a butterfly) in which everything alters, although "some subtle
and highly implicit features remain invariant" (8, p. 160)

The former characterizes much development thinking, whereas the subtlety
of the latter has hitherto made it appear non-operational or equivalent to
catastrophe. Given Atkin's use of simplicial complexes to describe social
organization, as discussed earlier, it is also interesting that Bohm suggests
the extension of this technique in terms of "multiplexes" (8, p.166-7).
His argument that phenomena need to be perceived as projections of a higher-dimensional
reality for which appropriate algebras are required (8, p.188), related to
Thorn's concerns with mathematical archetypes (19).

The challenge of Bohm's arguments lies in the manner in which they strike
at the very root of the meaning of human and social development. His arguments
highlight the extent to which both the physical and social sciences continue
to rely on a Cartesian framework (if only in the familiar tabular/matrix presentations
characteristic of social science papers) at a time when inherent weaknesses
in the thinking behind such frameworks have been demonstrated. His most
basic point is that the phenomena such as those which are the preoccupation
of "development" (peoples, ideologies, groups, societies) are essentially
derivative. "The things that appear to our senses are derivative forms
and their true meaning can be seen only when we consider the plenum, in which
they are generated and sustained, and into which they must ultimately vanish."
(8, p.192) In this light, the basic flaw in present development thinking
is the a priori recognition of certain distinct social entities which it now
seems desirable to "develop".

It is precisely this conception (as argued on different grounds by the
world-system
theorists) which reduces development to "sterile" transformative
operations and
prevents any metamorphoses (to use Bohm's terms). For it is development which
precedes and underlies such explicate social entities as a movement from which
they
have been unfolded: "what is
movement" (8, p.203).
Metamorphosis thus calls for
ways of unfolding new, currently implicate forms from this holomovement, and
enfolding into it those which are currently explicate, but are inadequate to
the
time. This is far removed from
mechanistic efforts to "eliminate" undesirable
structures and to "build" new ones from their components.

It should not be assumed that this implicate order is an inaccessible
theoretical
abstraction. Bohm argues that
consciousness itself operates by enfolding and
unfolding and that "not only is immediate experience best understood in
terms of the
implicate order, but that thought also is basically to be comprehended in this
order."
(8, p.204) This creates the
possibility for "an unbroken flowing movement from
immediate experience to logical thought and back" thus ending the
fragmentation
characteristic of the absence if any awareness of such movement (8,
p.203). He
argues that movement is itself sensed primarily in the implicate order and that
Piaget's work "supports the notion that the experiencing of the implicate
order is
fundamentally much more immediate and direct than that of the explicate order,
which...requires a complex construction that has to be learned" (8,
p.206).

7.4 Health and space-time

As has been noted on many occasions, the concept of health is intimately
related to
that of wholeness. As broadly defined
by the World Health Organization, it
encompasses the physical, psychological and spiritual well-being of the
individual and
is thus central to the concept of human and social development. It is therefore
valuable to explore the evolution in the concept of health, as a form of
integration,
and as throwing light on the implications of such integration for an
understanding of
development.

This question has been admirably discussed by Larry Dossey (95), a physician, in the
light of the conceptual implications of theoretical breakthroughs in 20th
century
physics, and notably as a result of the work of David Bohm (see above). The
shortcomings of the current health care system are increasingly perceived as
rooted
in the conceptual framework that supports medical theory and practice. As the
physicist Fritjof Capra states in introducing Dossey's work: "The crisis in medicine,
then, is essentially a crisis of perception, and hence it is inextricably
linked to a
much larger social and cultural crisis....which derives from the fact that we
are
trying to apply the concepts of an outdated world view - the mechanistic world
view of Cartesian-Newtonian science -
to a reality that can no longer be
understood in terms of these concepts."
(95, p.VIII)

To describe the globally interconnected world, in which biological, psychological,
social, and environmental phenomena are all interdependent, Dossey explores
the implications of quantum physics as "the most accurate description
we have ever discovered of the physical world" (95, p. l26).

Given the disturbing innovation of such physics, whereby the behaviour and
subjectivity of the observer is necessarily incorporated into any understanding
of the results of observation, he points out the weakness in the argument
that such theoretical breakthroughs are only of significance to the abstract
world of nuclear physics. He cites the physicist E Wigner who states: "The
recognition that physical objects and spiritual values have a very similar
kind of reality....is the only known point of view which is consistent with
quantum mechanics" (123 ??, p.192). Dossey points out that the relevance
of such supposedly sub-atomic preoccupations to macroscopic phenomena is also
demonstrated by Bell's theorem as noted by the physicist H S Stapp: "The
most important thing about Bell's theorem is that it puts the dilemma posed
by quantum phenomena clearly into the realm of macroscopic phenomena....it
shows that our ordinary ideas about the world are somehow profoundly deficient
even on the macroscopic level" (124, p.1303). The theorem can be described
as stating: "If the statistical predictions of quantum theory are true,
an objective universe is incompatible with the law of local causes",
which requires that events occur at a speed not exceeding that of light (124,
p.1303).

This theorem has been substantiated by experiments which show that simultaneous
changes in non-causally linked distant systems can occur when a change in
one takes place. In some sense, as yet not understood, all "objects"
thus constitute an indivisible whole, in contrast to the prevailing notion
of an external, fixed, objective world of separate things. Furthermore, the
theorem shows that the ordinary idea of an objective world unaffected by consciousness
lies in opposition not only to quantum theory but to facts established by
experiment.

In addition to the implications of quantum mechanics, Dossey draws attention
to those from the logical limitations highlighted by the theorems of Godel
(92), Turing and Church, and Tarski. These collectively demonstrate the
inherent limitations of any symbolic language which purports to describe the
world unambiguously but is also called upon to make self-referential statements
about itself as part of that world. They show that no precise language can
be universal and that no scientific system is complete. Any language used
to describe health and development, must necessarily suffer from similar limitations.

In the light of these considerations, Dossey points out that if our ordinary
view of life, death, health and disease rests solidly on seventeenth-century
physics (and on the logic on which it is based), and if this physics has now
been partially abandoned in favour of a more accurate description of nature,
then:

"an inescapable question occurs: must not our definitions of life,
death, health, and disease themselves changes? To refuse to face the consequences
to these areas is to favor dogma over an evolving knowledge....We have nothing
to lose by a reexamination of fundamental assumptions of our models of health;
on the contrary, we face the extraordinary possibility of fashioning a system
that emphasizes life instead of death, and unity and oneness instead of fragmentation,
darkness, and isolation." (95, p.141-2)

After listing the characteristics of health and of the image of man arising
from the "traditional" view (95, p.l39-141), Dossey outlines the
nature of the concept of health which emerges in the light of the new participative
descriptions of nature. He notes, for example, that even from the point
of view of elemental biology and physiology, the body behaves more as pattern
and process than as an isolated and noninteracting object. It cannot be
localized in space and its boundary is essentially illusory as in the notion
of "body" in de Nicolas analysis (above). Health and illness are
then a characteristic of the dynamic relationship between bodies on which
therapy should necessarily focus as a participative process. The divisions
of time are also arbitrarily imposed.

"Connected as we are to all other bodies, comprised as we are of an
unending flux of event themselves occurring in spacetime, we regard ourselves
not as bodies fixed in time at particular points, but as eternally changing
patterns for which precise descriptive terms seem utterly inappropritae."
(95, p.l 42-9)

The ordinary view of death is then inadequate because it is based on two
erroneous assumptions - that the body occupies a particular space, and that
it endures through a span of linear time (95, p. 158). Dossey considers that
during illness the experience of spacetime construction is distorted: "When
we are sick we become a Newtonian object: a bit-piece stranded in a flowing
time" (95, p.l75). Health and illness are field phenomena. Comprehending
spacetime in this way is not a matter of intelligence and restricted to gifted
scientists. It is largely a skill of the right-hemisphere. Such understanding
has long been characteristic of certain oriental philosophies, and other cultures
have developed with a concept of non-flowing time (95, p.l78). It is possible
that such understanding is even to some extent characteristic of the musically-oriented
(youth) in the West, for example. Desire for experience in this form may
also contribute to widespread use of drugs as offering an alternative to domination
of daily life by a Newtonian world view with its many limitations.

The emergence of such incompatible spacetime views in society as flowing
or non-flowing time, isolated objects or shifting energy patterns, should
perhaps be seen as constituting a vital complementarity of evolutionary significance.
Dossey therefore stresses the importance of alternation between them:

"These two modes of time perception, working alternately, make sense.
They strike a balance not conferred by either alone. Perhaps we find within
us these two capacities for sensing time because we needed one as much as
the other." (95, p. 180)

The two modes may then be seen as corresponding to Bohm's distinction between
the explicate and the implicate order, the former being characterized by separated
objects and the latter by flowing movement of totality (the holomovement).
For Dossey it is the latter with which health is associated, disease being
a disequilibrium in favour of the former:

"Seen in this way, health has a kinetic quality. There is an essential
dynamism to it, grounded as it is in Bohm's proposed underlying implicate
order...Health is not static." (95, p.l83)

Health and the Implicate Order
Reproduced from Dossey (95, p, 186-7)

Traditional View

Implicate View

1 The sensory world of objects and events is primary.

1. The sensory world of objects and events is not primary.
They belong to the explicate order which is grounded, or enfolded, in an
underlying indivisible totality, the implicate order.

2. Health is the absence of disease.

2, Health is not the mere absence of disease, but is the manifestation
of the harmonious interaction of all apparent parts that inhabit the explicate
domain.

3. Health and disease are absolutes

3. Health and disease are not and are irreconcilable opposites. irreconcilable
opposites. They are the "moving principles" of each other.

4. All living matter is potentially dead. Everything awaits
decay.

4. AH matter belongs to the implicate order, where everything
is alive. "What we call dead is an abstraction" (Bohm).

5. Life is characterised by movement, and death by stasis.

5. The implicate order enfolds all, and is flux; thus, both
life and death are movement. Nothing is static.

6. Health can be conceptualized as proper function of body
parts.

6. "Parts" exist only in the explicate domain. Therefore,
health transcends the function of parts, since all parts, which consist
of matter, are ultimately enfolded in the implicate order, and thus consist
of an indivisible whole.

8. All measurements refer to objects belonging to the explicate
order and are thus not primary. They defy the unanalysable wholeness of
the underlying totality in which all material bodies are grounded. As such,
all measurements are arbitrary and are poor indicators of health.

9. The focus of health care is on the physical body. Consciousness
is asecondary and irrelevant factor.

9. Both matter and consciousness are enfolded in the implicate
order, where all things are one. Thus, all mailer is to some degree conscious.
Health care cannot, therefore, ignore consciousness. To focus on matter
is to focus on consciousness.

10. Health care focuses on individuals.

10. This is an arbitrary and illusory concern of the explicate
domain. All matter is enfolded in the implicate order; thus, so too are
all bodies. To is to focus on all, since all bodies (all matter) comprise
a totality in the implicate order.

11. Therapy primarily is executed by mechanical means, by
matter acting on matter-e.g., by medications and surgery.

11. Everything is alive. There is nothing in principle, therefore,
preventing the use of consciousness as a primary form of therapeutic intervention
at all levels of matter-from subatomic particles through molecules,
cells, tissues, organ systems, etc.

12. Health care is of unquestioned value.

12. Insofar as traditional health care distorts the wholeness
of the body by inappropriate concentration on function of mere body parts,
it can be destructive. Health care, thus, is of qualified benefit,
since it may create distortions in body awareness which may prove harmful
and actually generate illness.

13. Transcendence of the concern about health is a mystical
aberration usually leading toneglect and rejection of the body.

13. Transcendence of the concern about health may indeed lead
to the view of health as irrelevant, but may also lead to an awareness
of the body as being materially alive at all levels. This awareness can
generate a spiritual regard for the body, a self-identity with the matter
comprising it, leading to an enhanced pattern of health care.

He contrasts this with a prevailing image of health as associated with some
"frozen stage of youth, whereafter things never change. ...We view health
as a frozen painting, a still collection of bits of information" (95,
p.183). But this has no meaning if health is the harmony of the movement
of interdependent parts. Dossey produces a 1 3-point table contrasting health
based on the traditional view with that based on an implicate view (95, p.186-7).
The problem is that modern health care (including holistic health), only focuses
on the reality of the explicate order of separate objects and events. "The
implicate domain, where the very meaning of health, disease, and death radically
changes, is currently of no concern to medicine." (95, p.189) Explicate
therapy has a purely mechanistic concern to "keep the parts running".

It is clear that Dossey's arguments with respect to health can also be made
with respect to human and social development in general, especially since
much development thinking can be viewed as directed towards "keeping
the parts running". There is much to be said therefore for exploring
the possibility of elaborating an implicate understanding of development as
a vital complement to the prevailing explicate view. Any "new world
order", to be of any long-term significance, could well be based on an
alternation between these two modes.

7.5. Dissonant harmony and holistic resonance

As Attali has shown (79), music remains one of the clearest domains in terms
of which the thinking underlying any social order can be discussed. It provides
a more concretely accessible language with which to comprehend the subtleties
and distinctions reviewed in the two previous sections. Thus the composer
Dane Rudhyar, in a study of spatialization of tone experience, confronts the
basic duality of those sections:

"The basic issues is, should we think of the notion of separate entities
in space, or of rhythmic movements of space producing entities which, though
they may appear to be separate, are in fact only differentiated areas of space
and temporary condensations of energy? This may seem to be a highly metaphysical
issue having very little to do with music or the other arts, but it is actually
the most basic issue a culture and its artists (and even the organizers and
leaders of the society) have to face" (69, p. 4l-2)

Rudhyar points out that the need for order is basic in human consciousness.
"But the kind of order human consciousness demands and expects
varies at each level of its evolution" (69, p. 93). In the realm of
music, Westerners have needed a type of musical order which makes it very
clear that classical works constitute an integrated whole with a consistent
tonal structure.

"Tonality is a system by which the innate pluralism of a society is
kept wihin a definitive operative structure. Its manifestation is not so
much in melodic sequence as in chordal harmony....Each melodic tone carries
an identifying badge announcing clearly where it belongs, not so much in relation
to the tonic as in terms of its place and function in the tonal bureaucracy.
This is the ransom of the ideal of universalism....(Multiplicity and differences
are the evident realities; the principle that makes possible the harmonization
of these differences has to work throughout the society, up and down the scale.
It has to be able to be "transposed" to any place, to meet any situation.
It is universal, but it has to be imposed upon the many units. It needs
the complex power of chords to achieve that purpose. In other words, in our
pluralistic European music the instinctual psychic power of integration that
once was inherent in sequences of tones had to be replaced by the harmonizing
impact of chords clearly stating the tonality to which melodic notes belong.
Cadences of chords also make the hearer expect how the melody will develop..."
(69, p. 9).

For Rudhyar, any society or work of art is a complex whole composed of many
parts which may be organized in two fundamentally different ways. In social
organization they may be termed the tribal order and the companionate order.
In music these are analogous to what he calls the consonant order and the
dissonant order. The tribal order, founded on biological relationships in
a community, derives its sense of unity from the past and all the associated
(paternalistic) traditions which give rise to such a compulsive, quasi-instinctual
feeling-realization. The musical equivalent is the harmonic series and overtones
in the classical tonality system.

The companionate order begins with a multiplicity of differentiated individuals
and strives to achieve unity as a future condition. If achieved it
has to be "unity in diversity" through the harmonization of unsuppressed
differences. Rudhyar argues that the musical equivalent of this is to be
found in what he calls syntonic music in which the experience of tone is unconstrained
by the intellectual concepts of the classical tonality system. Tonal relationships
are included in the space relationships of syntonic music, but the rules,
patterns, and cadences obligatory in tonality-controlled music normally hinder
the development of syntonic consciousness. In syntonic music the notes are
drawn into holistic group formations. Instead of emerging from a tonic,
they seek the interpenetrative condition of dissonant chords, as pleromas
of sounds. "These are limited in content; each has its own principle
of organization, which determines the content of the pleroma" (69, p.
142-5).

In these terms, Rudhyar considers that melody is aesthetic in the
tonality system associated with the culturally organized tribal order, and
expressionistic in a society characterized by transformation. In
the latter case its essential attributes are dissonances, rooted in
their own musical space. Such dissonant chords can generate, when properly
spaced, a far more powerful resonance than so-called perfect consonances,
because of the phenomena of beats and combination tones (69, pp. 143-6), which
engender beauty of another order (69, pp. 1 41). "A pleroma of sounds
refers to the process of harmonization through which differentiated vibratory
entities are made to interact and interpenetrate in order to release a particular
aspect of the resonance inherent in the whole of the musical space (accessible
to human ears), its holistic resonance, its Tone" (69, pp. 139-140).
As examples of such holistic resonance, he notes the traditional role and
effect of gongs (in Eastern societies) and church bells (in the West). Such
effects are also produced by two cymbals tuned to slightly different pitches,
giving rise to a vibrant tone because of the interference pattern of the two
different frequencies (69, p. 141) - a case reminiscent of Maruyama's
binocular vision analogy (see above).

Rudhyar concludes that although consonent harmony has its place and function
and should be enjoyed, its danger lies in re-inforcing psychological attachment
to the "matricial security and comfort" of the cultural framework
with which it is associated. This bond prevents the individual from developing
creative spontaneity and thereby engaging fully in the processes of social
transformation (69, p. 162).